my love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees

1. If you could have any view in the world visible from your bed, what would it be? 

    a backyard filled with wildflowers and trees—surrounded by a wall 50 feet high and embedded with razor wire and broken glass 

 

2. If you were to pick a city whose character best represents your own personality, which would you choose? 

     Lawrence, Kansas: bookish, goofy, foody, liberal, walk-friendly

 

3. If you could have a single button beside your bed that did one thing, what would you want it to do? 

    change the temperature inside the bed 

 

4. If you could have prevented one book from ever having been written, which book would it be?

    there is no good answer to this question. There are easy answers that require no thought (e.g. Mein Kampf) and hard answers that reveal more about one's personality but are still, in essence, judgmental and pro-censorship—and none that satisfactorily grasp the spirit of the exercise. 

 

5. If you could have had one person in your life be less candid than they were (or are), who would it be? 

    Nick was candid to the point of brutality, albeit unintentionally. The guy used a snowplow where a spatula would do.  

 

6. If in order to save your life, someone you know had to donate their heart to you (without dying), whose heart would you want inside yourself? 

    my former physical therapist, the most open and sunny soul

 

7. If you could cause any single person to change their mind about one thing or on one topic, who would you pick?

    the current vice president of the United States.  

 

[from If2: 500 New Questions for the game of life; the title quotation is by Emily Brontë, from Wuthering Heights]